After a truly heroic response from my viewers to help my friend Pete fight his battle against cancer, I had to devise a way to pick winners of the 4 prizes I offered as incentive. Initially I thought this would be easy, as maybe only a dozen, perhaps 100 would actually respond to my plea. When over 1200 generous people pitched in, my jaw dropped! The thought of writing 1242 numbers on little pieces of paper and picking them out of a hat didn't appeal to me, so I needed to devise something special. What everyday item has over 1200 individually numbered sections that could be chosen at random? I first thought raffle tickets, but was disappointed to find that they didn't start numerically at zero. Then an idea struck me: metric. A yard stick is around 1000 millimeters, so 2 of those would give me enough segments. Most measuring devices in Canada are in both Imperial and Metric. I could throw darts at two wooden yardsticks. But no, too wide an area to be random, and they may not stick. But I was close. The answer was found in a sewing kit: A 5 foot (1500mm) seam measuring tape!
I took a cloth measuring tape and cut it into 5 strips. I glued the smallest one in the middle of a piece of plywood with cork tile mounted to it. It started at 60 because on the GoFundMe page my viewer donations started after 60 of Pete's closest friends had already donated. The other strips were on each side in mixed up order and included the remaining numbers up to 1250. This seemed to be more fair, especially since I suck at darts!
I did film the dart game, perhaps it will show up in a segment of a future video.
It took several tries, but my goal was not just to get close to a mark, I actually wanted to hit the cloth tape so there was no doubt what the number would be.
I only had 3 darts, and because they were old and brittle they started to crumble. But before they disintegrated completely, I ended up with 4 numbers:
806, 107, 581, and 127.
Those were the winning numbers. Next was the hardest part, as I needed to line those 4 numbers up with the donations. Terry, Pete's sister (The biggest hero of all, since she is the one that set up the GoFundMe page to help her dear brother), assisted me in aligning those numbers by the chronological order of the donations. She contacted those donors and provided the email addresses to me.
So I'm proud to announce the winners of the four prizes:
First Prize (One-of-a-kind Camouflage Hoodie with "Don't Worry be Camping" Logo) goes to SB of West Virginia. Congratulations SB, may the camouflage make you invisible!
Second Prize (Blue Hoodie, full "Don't Worry be Camping" Logo in front) goes to:
Kathy S of South Carolina. Congratulations Kathy, I hope it keeps you warm on those chilly Carolina nights!
Third Prize ("Don't Worry be Camping" tin coffee cup) goes to:
JS of Maryland. Congratulations JS, enjoy your morning brew (works for tea too!)
Fourth Prize (Book "Sunburn Scabs of the 70's) goes to:
SL of Maine. Congratulations SL, may it give you many chuckles!
But it must be said, there are no losers here. All that donated are indeed winners, including those that donated before I helped out. Pete is in good hands, and you all have given him hope. He is in our thoughts and in our prayers. We love you Pete!